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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27396928">ends are beginnings</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/syrtis_mons/pseuds/syrtis_mons'>syrtis_mons</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Authority</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Backstory, Bechdel Test Pass, Gen, IDK if this counts as a happy ending but its cathartic maybe, i was trying to write something else but it ended up here so...</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 20:34:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>557</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27396928</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/syrtis_mons/pseuds/syrtis_mons</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Her team packed up her room in January 2000, bone-tired and weary, having lost someone they had loved. They found a dogeared original copy of Elizabeth's book on Jenny's bedside table.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>ends are beginnings</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><br/>
"Save the world.<br/>
They deserve it.<br/>
Be better.<br/>
Or I'll come back and kick your heads in."<br/>
-Jenny Sparks</p><p>They held her funeral in Westminster Abbey. She had fought in world wars and secret wars, had lived each day of a long century of tumult and change. The world had needed a higher authority, and with the fading last light of the twentieth century, she created that Authority.</p><p>She had touched so many parts of the 20th century, released so many butterflies of change. So many of these butterflies were beautiful, the inherent inevitable tragedy hidden. Finding a friend in lonely 1913 Vienna led to a global war and the development of the atom bomb. Was it her fault that his name became synonymous with evil? Could she have saved him and everyone by never getting close? Why did this happen with people she tried to connect with?</p><p>She met Elizabeth in 1968, sedated but not sedate in a Chicago hospital. <strike>why was she alive why was she the one doomed to be stuck in the world why did everyone she knew get hurt why was she responsible for the pain of the world</strike> Elizabeth told her that she hadn't processed her grief. Jenny told her that coming to terms with what she had done to the world wasn't what she wanted to do, that Dr. Kübler-Ross could fuck off, that she knew she would die on December 31st, 1999. Elizabeth left.</p><p>Elizabeth came back, kept coming back until Jenny could talk with her, until Jenny stopped telling Elizabeth that she would only be hurt by knowing Jenny. Jenny let Elizabeth in, let her know the young British woman who talked about people and places she could not have been alive for. Elizabeth told Jenny about beauty, about how the world could be kind, but understood that too often it wasn't. Jenny began to live again, to try to if not move on, at least move forwards. Jenny loved Elizabeth, loved her for staying despite knowing what could happen to her by staying.</p><p>Elizabeth published a book (On Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross) and was featured in LIFE magazine. Jenny left, knowing what would happen, what always happened if she stayed any longer. She couldn't let it happen to Elizabeth.</p><p>Her team packed up her room in January 2000, bone-tired and weary, having lost someone they had loved. They found a dogeared original copy of Elizabeth's book on Jenny's bedside table.</p><p>Jenny had left it to Elizabeth in her will, a note written in blue ink inside the front cover.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Elizabeth,</p><p>I told you one day that I knew the day of my death, that I had accepted and was ready for it.</p><p>The truth is, I hadn't and I wasn't. This book and my time with you helped change that, helped me get back up and try again, to be better than I was before. To keep trying even when everything fell apart time and time again. Thank you for believing in a crazy woman who talked about aliens, for telling me that I deserved to be happy, for understanding me.</p><p>If you ever meet a young girl named Jenny with a weird last name, a girl who looks at you like she doesn't quite know what's going on, say hi for me.</p><p>-Jenny Sparks</p>
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